If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. This is a simple statement of fact that, somehow, the other side of the gun debate simply can't comprehend. That doesn't make it less true, though, and here's a bit of evidence to support that.
Owning a gun in France isn't simple. It's not common. It also didn't stop a series of (gun) attacks on French prisons.
France's justice minister said on Tuesday gun and arson attacks on at least six prisons around the country were acts of terrorism directed at security officials charged with guarding some of the nation's most hardened crime kingpins.
Visiting Toulon prison in southern France, whose entrance was shot at with an AK-47 automatic rifle, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said he could not be sure if the attacks were linked to government efforts to clamp down on France's fast-growing drug trade.
But he said authorities were making life much harder for imprisoned gangsters, and the government would not shy away from tackling drug crime, which has boosted support for the far right.
"The Republic will not back down," he told reporters. "These are extremely serious crimes ... an attack on the public prison service, that is, a terrorist attack."
Years of record South American cocaine imports to Europe have transformed local drug markets, sparking a wave of violence.
Despite record cocaine seizures in France, gangs are reaping windfalls as they expand from traditional power bases in cities such as Marseille into smaller towns unused to drug violence.
Darmanin, who plans to create new high-security prisons to crack down on gangsters who run their empires from behind bars, said at least six prisons had been targeted.
Prison officers' union UFAP said vehicles were set on fire outside jails in Villepinte, Nanterre, Aix-Luynes, and Valence. In Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at home, while in Marseille, there was an attempted arson attack.
While there's not a lot of talk about how French gun laws completely and totally failed here in the original piece, I didn't expect that there would be.
After all, that's not something the media is really good at mentioning after something like this.
These are serious attacks, and I'm not going to make light of those.
But I can't help but look at it from a certain perspective, considering how many American gun control advocates look at Europe and hold it up as some shining example we should all be eager to follow.
The problem is that regular folks are left at the mercy of the merciless while doing nothing to stop the worst kinds of people from getting guns. One of these incidents involved a full-auto AK-47. That's something most of us will never get our grubby little paws on, and some thug in France had one to take shots at a prison.
Clearly, it couldn't have been difficult to get since nothing in this attack suggests we're discussing a mastermind of any sort. I mean, he shot at a prison entrance. What did he think he was really going to do?
Of course, they're also getting cocaine pretty easily, too, which has to be imported. I mean, France apparently has some nice enough weather, but it's the completely wrong climate to grow coca.
So, it's imported.
Does anyone really think guns can't come in the same way?
That's likely what's happening, which means guns end up in the hands of criminals while regular people are left without any means to protect themselves. Sure, these attacks are directed toward prisons, but only an idiot thinks violent drug gangs are too principled to attack regular folks.
In France, guns are outlawed. As we can see, the outlaws still have guns.
Just as it ever will be.
